


Catharsis

by ceilingfan5



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Catharsis, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Introspection, M/M, Support, kravitz doesn't have a lot to say but he is important, not my usual fare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 07:14:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12699984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceilingfan5/pseuds/ceilingfan5
Summary: You know when your therapist says "It sounds like you've been having a hard time" and you burst into tears like...fuck...I have been having a hard time! Shit isn't terrible because I'm terrible, it really is just hard!That's what Taako's feeling. Kravitz gets him through it.





	Catharsis

**Author's Note:**

> This is set sometime before the whole big fuckery that is from The Suffering Game to the Grand Finale, but definitely carries some of that weight. There are mild spoilery references here to Stolen Century. I'll be honest...this almost had a depressing song title, but I resisted. I still want you to know that's the exact feeling here. I don't usually write 'angst', but shit was been hard for all of us and it feels good to remember it's not us, it's the shit. It's cathartic to acknowledge it, whether you're talking about it with a good listener or living vicariously through a fictional elf. Travis McElroy would want you to cry. I did.

Technically, elves don't need to sleep. They can take twice the rest in half the time by meditating deeply, like evolved beings and not animals. Of course, the rare unfocused or peaceless elf can still physically sleep, but the act is less physically rewarding and can be difficult. It's when an elf cannot even sleep that there becomes a problem. 

Rest is when one recovers, both physically and mentally, and without rest, the body and soul wither and twist, and from there, of course, it snowballs. It takes more to kill an elf than a simple human, but without enough proper rest, an elf suffers just the same. 

Taako has been having night terrors longer than he can remember. It's been years since he managed a good solid meditation. Turning off all of the noise in your head and focusing on inner peace is practically impossible when your inner monologue is a fuckload of screaming all the damn time, and even when it is possible, the bare thought of amplifying that terror dome for a while is preventative enough. Sure, Taako rests every now and again. He's got his trusty sleeping sack, charmed to knock him out like a Nyquil potion, but it takes up a valuable spell slot on the regular and it never allows him to charge his batteries fully. 

The plain truth is that he doesn't want to be alone with his thoughts. He can't remember a time when he could be, really. As dangerous as other people were, alone always felt plain wrong, totally sideways, like a curse he hadn’t seen cast. That inner place had never felt fully comfortable in living memory, something always missing, painfully at the edge of his spiritual vision. Someone he used to know accused him of being precognitive, what with all the horrible deja vu he had all the time, but that just made him feel more sour. Bullshit he could predict the future. If he could, a lot of people would still be alive. 

It was shit like that that kept him awake, chasing his tail in circles and wishing for something beyond to just do something about it. Nothing ever did, and he always got up the next day and kept going, more out of inertia and spite than any real sense of duty. The other guys made that a little weird, prodding him about his dark circles and shitty attitude and the smallest bit of nocturnal screaming. Being alone had been easier. It had been a long time since he had to explain any shit to anybody, and it made him uncomfortable just to acknowledge it. They had no right to pretend to worry and fuss over him, and he didn't want them to. 

Not that he terribly minded how safe the dorm felt with the two of them there, better by miles than a secret campfire for one and a can of lukewarm self pity beans. Statistically, he was doing better.

Personally? Well, mind your fucking business, that's how. 

There more people you know, though, the more people know you. And the more people know you, the more they expect some kind of information on account when you know plenty about them, because some people enjoy talking about their problems willy-nilly and letting just anyone know all their intimate details, opening their chests and asking everyone watching to poke at their innards. Disgusting. Taako didn’t know about them, but the shit he kept padlocked in his ribcage was deadly poisonous, and under no circumstances would he allow another person to die for his bullshit. Letting them know why was totally beside the point.

Except when it builds. And rots. And lays tendrils down in his subconscious, wrecking what’s left of his sleep and making him scream and writhe and ache. And he stuffs it down, ignores it, and it builds more, full to bursting, and he gets snappy and people are rude right back and even though they deserve to be, because he can definitely be an ass sometimes, it hurts like it shouldn’t, personal and scathing, and he hides himself away and chews on the insides of his cheeks and his poor nails and his soul vibrates to the very core. 

For the longest time, he’d just have to keep it there, until he could fight a bugbear or get the shit kicked out of him or curse some local piece of shit halfway to the grave.

Now, godsdammit, one person and another keep asking the same barbed question. 

“Are you okay?”

‘Fine’ only goes so far, is only so believable when your face is turning purple and you won’t even pretend to go to bed. And, motherfucker, it only gets worse when they talk about it to one another, whispering behind their hands about how deficient you are and how terrible and how unpleasant and then they all know you’re having a rough time and those questions keeps coming until you shatter into a million pieces and take them out with you.

He’s lucky the final blow comes over the stone of farspeech, so he can at least hide his stupid idiot face. 

“I’m fine,” he says to Kravitz, horrifically embarrassed his totally-not-charming voice cracking like a teenager on the edge of waterworks. He feels so small, like he’s under a magnifying glass and the whole sun is leaning in to watch him squirm. 

“Are you? Magnus and Merle sent me a message, which, I’ll admit, was really strange, but talking to you, I’m getting kind of worried.”

That punches Taako in the throat and it takes a few hard gasps to re-inflate his lungs, which seem to be full of nails and the Chardonnay he had for dinner.

“No, you, you don’t have to be. Concerned. That’s unnecessary.” 

“Don’t tell me what to be concerned about. Just...Just tell me about you. How was your week?”

“Fine,” Taako tries to say again, croaking and wrapping barbed wire around his heart. “I didn’t have a lot of chances to cook. We had a few...rough fights, I guess...” Each detail comes out like a rotten tooth, and they’re smoothed over as is. Knocked unconscious several times, brought to zero health like he lived there, death so up close and personal he can feel the breeze run down his neck, and as exhausted as he is, the thought of leaving the mortal realm for nothing, with nothing to show, erased from living memory completely...The thought makes him shudder. 

As sweet as relief sometimes sounds, as tempting as an escape as it is from guilt, loneliness, pain, self hatred, the very idea of being completely forgotten scared him to the very core. Even before Yohann put words to the feeling, the terror had lived inside him. He was supposed to be famous and universally loved! Not infamous at best and less than dirt at the worst. He wanted to be known, but didn't want to be known for his greatest mistake, and that warred within him every time he closed his eyes. Now that he was part of the BOB, that risk was even greater. When he’d realized what really happened to Magic Brian, he'd felt sick. I mean, fuck that guy, as beautiful and interesting as he was, but to be completely washed from collective memory, from mortal history? That was much worse than death. 

Not to mention! The tighter he tied his wagon to those two assholes, and Angus, and Carey, and Killian, and Lucretia, and whoever the fuck else, the harder it would hurt when that connection was inevitably ripped away and he was kicked out for not being good enough, not holding up his share, not keeping up with the caravan. He’d be alone again. It was only a matter of time. Experience was the best teacher, and it’d happened to him enough that he knew it was rapidly approaching. This was the relative calm before the murderous storm, and any day now, they’d get sick of his bullshit or he’d lose too many fights, and it’d be over. 

“Um. Taako?” Kravitz’s voice was uneasy, and Taako was embarrassed to realize he had no idea how long he’d been silent. His face stung and he scrambled to cover. 

“Er- Yes? What did you say?”

“I just said, you’ve had a really hard time. And I’m sorry.” 

“I-” He doesn’t even know why, but the dam breaks, and the tears flood out of him before he can rein them all in, and suddenly he’s sobbing so hard he can barely breathe, and he hates himself for breaking in front of someone else, even just on audio, but he just can’t hold it in, and every single breath tears a new hole in his composure. 

“Taako?”

“Yeah, I-” it hurts, it hurts so much, and the fact that he somehow kept all of this inside him for so long baffles the shit out of him, but it just keeps coming out of the open holes and burning deep trenches in its wake. “I have had a hard time...”

Admitting it feels...some type of way. Satisfying, sort of, but the tears get worse, and he hates himself for admitting anything, but getting the poison out leaves a sort of hollowness that at the very least feels better than the burning and rotting. 

“...May I come over?”

The thought of being seen like this is horrendous, but the possibility of physical contact at the moment wins out. 

“Just- don’t- look.” He wheezes out, sobbing like some kind of heartbroken idiot piece of shit who can’t sort his own shit out, and before he can blink back enough of the tears to see right in front of his face, Kravitz is there in his thankfully empty dorm, blindfolded like some kind of lovestruck fool, taking him so seriously like that, and he wraps his cold, bony arms around Taako and Taako cries even harder, evicting as many demons as he can right out the front door. His throat is raw and some cynical part of him is so ashamed of this ridiculous display, but just the pressure and presence of this person that should have exterminated him like a rat months ago is so stupefyingly comforting he allows himself to curl into the embrace and take it, for once, at face value. 

It lasts way longer than he’d like to admit. The fact that it happened at all is disgusting, but that it went on for some time is even worse. But it felt...right. Like a thorn removed, or a curse reversed, at least one of them. By the time the tears stopped, it felt almost like a relief. Some of that pressure, that rotting, burning, screaming pressure, had escaped, and maybe someone would suffer for it, but at the moment, it was gone, and he could breathe, although through about a gallon of snot. 

“I’m not going to kiss you,” he said at last, his voice nasally and raw. 

“I don’t really mind,” Kravitz responded, for some reason nearly as raw. Through the whole miserable thing he had just been there, just waited for him to get it all out, and it was unthinkable that he would be upset too. “I don’t think I’d be able to keep a fleshed jaw straight right now anyway. We’ll raincheck it.” 

“Fine,” Taako said, this time with a lot less murder behind it. “Another time.” He rested his head on Kravitz’s chest and sighed deeply. “Just...not right now.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Kravitz took in a too-deep breath for a guy with no lungs, and bit an invisible lip. “I...have to get back to work soon.”

“It’s whatever. I think I’m going to sleep.” I’m just glad you came, he didn’t say. I’m glad you listened, he didn’t even let himself think. 

“I could come back later?”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m good now.” It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it’s not a full lie, either. He felt like he was on a boat in the middle of some blasted sea, steady for the moment in the center of it all. Not in immediate danger, not completely safe. But similes were for assholes. “Go back to work. I’ll just make macarons when I wake up.” 

It was obvious how he hesitated, that stupid blindfold still on, which may or may not have even worked on a spectral being like him, though Taako appreciated the thought. He was actually kind of considering redoing his face before he laid down, but the thought exhausted him even more. Maybe he’d just curse the dorm so no one walked in on him like this, and get the beauty rest he so desperately needed.

“Taako?” Just go already. Stop poking the wound. 

“What.” He pressed his head against Kravitz’s robe, enjoying the silky feel on his burning face. 

“Thanks for talking to me. I worry about you when. You know, I mean, I’m not the greatest with...feelings, or...whatever, but...”

“Mhm.”

“And. Well. I mean. This is cheesy, but...I want to make this work. I want to stay with you.” 

And just like magic, it wells right back up his throat and spills out again, no stopping it now. 

“Get the fuck out,” Taako says through tears and laughter and pain and relief. 

“I’m going, I’m going,” Krav groans, taking time to ‘kiss’ Taako’s head before slicing the the barrier between realities and disappearing into the ether. The room still smells like burning alternate worlds for a while after he’s gone, and Taako forgets to take the time to end the call before he crawls into his sleepy sack and succumbing to the satisfying exhaustion that catharsis left in its wake. It wasn’t fixed forever, by any means, but the relief was worth the pain. Acknowledging his own fucking pain...well, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t something he could just do. But having it pointed out so blankly like that…

How could he ignore it? Fuck, his life was hard! It wasn’t totally his fault! It’s not like things sucked just because he sucked, or that other people could handle all of this and he was just too weak to! It was fucking bullshit! He shouldn’t have to handle it, and the fact that he was still alive was amazing! It was easy to ignore his own pain, call himself weak for having any, for not handling it well, for losing sleep over things people with worse pain could handle, but to take a look at it in harsh light was a lot harder. Sure, it fucking hurt letting it out, but the rawness felt cleaner, like he’d scrubbed himself from the inside. 

Sure, it’d come back. He’d ignore taking care of himself again, and things would get bad again, and he’d feel shitty again, but...well…

Well, maybe he wasn’t completely alone after all. That idea carried him far, enabled him to get in bed and comforted him enough to finally allow himself to sleep. Things were shitty, alright, but not everything and everyone was. A little hope was better than none. 

And honestly? He was fucking tired.

**Author's Note:**

> Let yourself feel better. If you liked this, I'd love a comment. I haven't written in a long ass time and you can guess why. I have a twitter (@ceilingfan_5) which is locked right now since I'm student teaching, but I'll approve any followers. Give me some short ideas to write and I might be able to pull something out. 100% talk to me about taz or other fandoms we share. My discord is ceilingfan5 and my discord id is #5613, so chat me up there if twitter isn't your scene or the lock makes you nervous. I haven't been on tumblr in one million years, but you can see some of my older works at @fan5fics.


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